Digitize your documents while cutting back on incoming and outgoing paper!

Updated June 5, 2014

Join Joe Kissell as he helps you clear the chaos of an office overflowing with paper. With Joe's guidance you can develop a personal clean-up strategy and choose your Mac-compatible tools--a document scanner and the software you need to perform OCR (optical character recognition), devices and services for storing your digitized documents, and tools to categorize, locate, and view your digital document collections. Once you have your gear in hand, Joe shows you convert your paper documents to digitized files and gives you ideas for how to organize your office workflow, explaining how to develop the day-to-day techniques that reduce the amount of time you spend pressing buttons, launching software, and managing your digitized documents.

In addition to all of the above, Joe clues you in to these paper-reducing skills:

Scanning or photographing documents you find while out and about--business cards, receipts, menus, flyers, and labels--so you keep only digitized versions. Joe discusses a variety of mobile scanning options, with an emphasis on using a camera-equipped iOS device, and lists similar options for employing Android, Windows, and BlackBerry smartphones.

Creating a digitized image of your signature so you can sign and share documents digitally, rather than printing them for the sole purpose of signing them with a pen.

Setting up your computer to send and receive faxes so you can avoid using a physical fax machine with paper input and output. Joe describes online fax services and using a fax modem.

Common techniques for reducing paper--paperless billing, online bank statements, and more--and less common practices, such as paperless postal mail services and check depositing services. Joe also shares effective tips for reducing the amount of catalogs, junk mail, and paper that you receive.

Joe Kissell

Joe Kissell has written numerous books about the Macintosh, including many popular Take Control ebooks. He's also Senior Editor of TidBITS and a Senior Contributor to Macworld, and previously spent ten years in the Mac software industry.